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 Overread wrote:
The prequels had the issue that they had no head-room. They had 3 films and no (at the time) idea that TV series and such could come along. So they had 3 films to squish everything into and then it hits A New Hope. So yeah everything feels on speed-up and they can't let any characters get too established unless they are going to appear in A New Hope - everyone else has to die off or vanish fairly fast.

JarJar is perhaps one of the few who survives, but who just vanishes into nothing in the story.

Then they shouldn't have made up so many new characters so the ones they did use had room to breathe.

I have said this before. Darth Maul should have been the Darth Vader of the prequels.

You have Maul kill Qui Gon in front of Obi Won and then instead of dying, simply escapes while Obi Won is stuck behind his video game energy door.

Obi decides to train Anakin. Yadda yadda. Second movie it's years later and Maul has been a monster in the shadows plaguing the clone wars. But specifically, always getting away. And often, killing people close to Anakin and Obi Won. Yoda's words are reflected here. Maul is a terror weapon. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate is the path to the dark side. Both Anakin and Obi Won are frustrated that they cannot seem to catch this guy and people around them keep dying because of it.

At movie 3 this comes to a head as Obi Wan lets go of his fear and anger while Anakin begins to fear for Padme. It's when Maul comes after her that Anakin lashes out truly in his anger and hate. Obi letting go becomes a better Jedi and Anakin succumbing to his fear/anger/hate slips farther and farther away. It's Anakin that ends up killing Maul and then turns on everyone else for failing to protect all the people that Maul has killed over the years. That the Jedi were too weak to do what was needed. So on and so forth.

Maul was the interesting villain through-line the prequels needed like Vader was. And his role as this horrible demon looking assassin is a great way to show Anakins fall to the dark side. Duku can get fethed.

The end result is you get Obi following the Jedi teachings and becoming greater. Anakin failing to and fulfilling Yoddas worries. And it reflects in 4/5/6 when Obi gets killed like Qui Gon did and then Luke sees his friends under threat in Empire and finally faces Vader in Jedi when his sister is threatened. But unlike his father he pulls back from the darkside and chooses Obi Wons path. Remember that conversation between yoda and ghost Obi? "Was I any different?" It actually happens this way.

 Overread wrote:
The prequels had the issue that they had no head-room. They had 3 films and no (at the time) idea that TV series and such could come along. So they had 3 films to squish everything into and then it hits A New Hope. So yeah everything feels on speed-up and they can't let any characters get too established unless they are going to appear in A New Hope - everyone else has to die off or vanish fairly fast.

Of course, part of the problem there is that they use an entire movie pretty much entirely to introduce Anakin. His origin as a slave could have been worked into the first 10 minutes of the movie, then skip forward 10 years or so to start of all the political intrigue and the formation of the Separatist Alliance.

I suspect that Lucas had always intended to fill in the gaps between the movies with other content, because otherwise just skipping entirely over the Clone Wars is a really weird choice... but they suffer from the lack of fleshing out as a result, particularly in the treatment of Anakin... (which the Clone Wars series doesn't actually fix... he's still a completely different character at the end of the Clone Wars to the Anakin we see in RotS, which is a problem because the finale of Clone Wars is happening during RotS...)

This is pretty much the exact same thing that happened with the Sequels, though... Disney always intended the Star Wars franchise to encompass movies, TV series, comics and books, and so the sequels included a lot of stuff that was intended to be explained elsewhere. Which is fine for those who follow the entirety of the multimedia catalogue, but leaves a lot of gaps for those who are just watching the movies.

I like Dooku as a character and his scene in Attack of the Clones where he lays out the entire plot to Obi-wan trying to recruit him is my favorite scene (and one of the few I recall) from the pre-quells.

Maul was just a blunt instrument. Dooku was actually interesting as a former Jedi himself, now turned Separatist.

He’s also not a creation of Palpatine. His disillusionment with the Order and the Republic are his own. Palpatine simply harnessed what was already there.

I think there's a few things at play with the prequels. The Phantom Menace was jarring in a lot of ways; some of which it was at fault with and some of which are a result of audience expectations. Star Wars at the point had always been kind of run down and despite repeatedly stating in the films that we were in the boonies, the EU rarely got across the idea that there was true opulence in the core worlds until we saw Naboo, which really ran afoul of audience expectations and felt more like an artifact of early CGI than an intentional choice. That's actually probably been the best element of Disney's TV push, as its really depicted life of the elite as something almost alien to the sands of Tantooine in a way that I think TPM wanted to say, but didn't quite have the time or chops to pull off.




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 Lance845 wrote:

Maul was the interesting villain through-line the prequels needed like Vader was. And his role as this horrible demon looking assassin is a great way to show Anakins fall to the dark side.

I think Maul is likely a character that got compromised as they realized that while an incredible stuntman, Ray Park just wasn't an actor who could deliver lines. Over the years he's had an incredible amount of dialogue cut from every film he's been in and while I bear the man no ill will at all, I think its just one of those calls you have to make while filming that something just isn't going to work.

Given Peter Serafonwicz did his lines for TPM, you might be right.

 insaniak wrote:

I suspect that Lucas had always intended to fill in the gaps between the movies with other content, because otherwise just skipping entirely over the Clone Wars is a really weird choice... but they suffer from the lack of fleshing out as a result, particularly in the treatment of Anakin... (which the Clone Wars series doesn't actually fix... he's still a completely different character at the end of the Clone Wars to the Anakin we see in RotS, which is a problem because the finale of Clone Wars is happening during RotS...)

My understanding is the TV show was always part of the plan, but its worth noting that the OT skips over huge chunks of content as well and benefits greatly for it. One of the best elements of those films is their ability to drop you into the middle of an ongoing adventure without setup beyond the title crawl and let you feel instantly reconnected with what's going on. I think the prequels try to pull that off again and I'd argue RotS does, but AotC definitely stumbles by requiring an entirely new Anakin.

Can someone familiar with the Old EU tell me when the Rule of Two first cropped up?

It is of course mentioned in TPM, making it officially canon at that point. But for the period when no films were coming out, it also explains why, Sith wise, there was just Palpatine and Vader, rather than hundreds of the evil buggers.

Pretty sure it’s old Republic fluff, but don’t know if TPM did it first.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Can someone familiar with the Old EU tell me when the Rule of Two first cropped up?

It is of course mentioned in TPM, making it officially canon at that point. But for the period when no films were coming out, it also explains why, Sith wise, there was just Palpatine and Vader, rather than hundreds of the evil buggers.

Pretty sure it’s old Republic fluff, but don’t know if TPM did it first.

It's first mentioned in TPM's "always two" line. It got built out further during the prequel era when they introduced Darth Bane.

I thought it was older than that, but it was more that prior to TPM learning the ways of the Force was always treated as a Master/Apprentice tradition that created a paired dynamic more than their being a hard line limit on Sith that we got with the Rule of Two and certainly a far cry from the institutionalized mandatory training we see from the prequels.

Honestly this makes me a little sad that we never really see Vader hunting Jedi. Both Maul and Dooku die to only a very few Jedi. It would have been really awesome to have had part where we saw Vader going after and beating actual Jedi after his transformation. Showing just how brutal and scary he is to other Jedi compared to others.

I partially agree. Certainly there’s room for such stuff in the still not massively explored time between Prequel and OT for that.

But the newly minted Vader being given relatively menial “but it’s definitely important, I promise” tasks, such as hunting down the Younglings is something I see as deliberate.

His actions in Palpatine’s office are rash, and done in the heat of the moment. He’d fallen far, but there was still room for him to come to his senses and take out Palpatine - and Palpatine knew he was capable, especially if going all Angry Dark Side.

So he’s kept off balance, given vile tasks to drive him ever further into guilt and despair, giving him a much longer road to walk to turn around. And importantly, keep him a tool. Something useful to Palpatine, and to be kept around and subservient, until such time as You’re Dead Or Palpatine Finds Someone Better, as happened to both Maul and Tyranus.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly this makes me a little sad that we never really see Vader hunting Jedi. Both Maul and Dooku die to only a very few Jedi. It would have been really awesome to have had part where we saw Vader going after and beating actual Jedi after his transformation. Showing just how brutal and scary he is to other Jedi compared to others.

Definitely something that's been covered well elsewhere (Rebels in particular) and something that was supposed to be part of the original prequel designs. Anakin at one point was going to start hunting down Jedi that had gone rogue for example. There's a lot that got crammed into RotS and there's tons of cut content that was filmed. There's a 4 hour rough cut that tries to wrap up all the ideas that mostly got cut to try and focus on Anakin's fall that test audiences felt was too weak.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Can someone familiar with the Old EU tell me when the Rule of Two first cropped up?

It is of course mentioned in TPM, making it officially canon at that point. But for the period when no films were coming out, it also explains why, Sith wise, there was just Palpatine and Vader, rather than hundreds of the evil buggers.

Pretty sure it’s old Republic fluff, but don’t know if TPM did it first.

Didn’t the Old Republic come out after the Prequels? I’m fairly sure the prequels were the source of the rule of two.

However, I also remember a time (the ESB novelization) when Darth Vader was a dark lord of the sith rather than the dark lord of the sith. I remember feeling like it implied there could be more Darth Vader types in the empire who just weren’t part of the Death Star/Skywalker arc so weren’t onscreen, and Star Wars was a much more open setting.

The early novels had Mara Jade and other force sensitive agents of the Emperor, when Sith might have been a regional rank of ethnic title or whatever. I don’t know if they were ever specifically called apprentices, but the Emperor clearly liked to keep his options open.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Can someone familiar with the Old EU tell me when the Rule of Two first cropped up?

It is of course mentioned in TPM, making it officially canon at that point. But for the period when no films were coming out, it also explains why, Sith wise, there was just Palpatine and Vader, rather than hundreds of the evil buggers.

Pretty sure it’s old Republic fluff, but don’t know if TPM did it first.

Didn’t the Old Republic come out after the Prequels? I’m fairly sure the prequels were the source of the rule of two.

However, I also remember a time (the ESB novelization) when Darth Vader was a dark lord of the sith rather than the dark lord of the sith. I remember feeling like it implied there could be more Darth Vader types in the empire who just weren’t part of the Death Star/Skywalker arc so weren’t onscreen, and Star Wars was a much more open setting.

The early novels had Mara Jade and other force sensitive agents of the Emperor, when Sith might have been a regional rank of ethnic title or whatever. I don’t know if they were ever specifically called apprentices, but the Emperor clearly liked to keep his options open.

The original Old Republic stuff was part of the Dark Horse line of comics in the 90s. It's notable for having lightsabers with power cords and really REALLY wanting Star Wars to be Dune even more than ANH. When KotOR was released there were people upset it didn't seem to have anything to do with those comics but definitely more of what people wanted after the prequels.

The Sith wasn't really a defined thing for quite a while. Fans often referred to them as the dark counterpart to Jedi, but it wasn't locked in for quite a while. Famously Zahn's original draft of Heir to the Empire had the race of Thrawn's little assassin alien friends be the Sith. The planet worshipped Vader and would eventually bestow Leia with the title of Lady of the Sith in the book. George Lucas decided he would rather use the name for dark Force users whenever he got around to the prequels and made Zahn change their race to the Noghri. I'm pretty sure some of the other EU books introduced Dark Jedi as Sith Lords before the prequels though.

Notably, the nature of the Force is something that was almost entirely codified by outside elements. Games in particular really played up the dichotomy of Light and Dark where the intention and portrayal was more built around the corrupting influence of power.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Didn’t the Old Republic come out after the Prequels?

So part of the Old Republic as a setting was to set a period of Star Wars history so far back in time, they could do whatever they wanted and not have to worry about continuity. Then Knights of the Old Republic became so popular among the fanbase explaining the transition from The Old Republic to the Prequel era became a whole sub-genre in the old EU.

Can someone familiar with the Old EU tell me when the Rule of Two first cropped up?

Darth Bane, if I recall right it has been a long time, is first mentioned for the very first time in the Phantom Menace novelization but Lucas had already somewhat developed the idea of the character before that. The Rule of Two is mentioned at the end of the film for the first time but the novelization had a little more detail and subsequent EU material further expanded on the idea and Bane as a character. But the idea that there were only two sith lords is older going all the way back to the Zahn novels and dark horse comics that really started the EU as a thing. It just wasn't formally codified as an explicit 'rule' until the Phantom Menace.

A lot of the EU material in the 90s was focused on after the first three movies where the origins and rules of the Sith weren't that important since the most prominent villains were Palpatine, dark Jedi, Palpatine, Imperial officers, or Palpatine. In this early era of EU material the Sith and their origins were not a coherent topic that was being explored. I think writers tended to interpret that Palpatine didn't want to share power too much and that's why it was just him an Vader and whether or not there were other Sith was something that came up now but the ideas were more scattered and not built around any explicit rule or idea of a rule.

One thing to note is that at this stage, the EU was still relatively young. Phantom Menace came out in 1999 while the core novels that would really shape the EU were the Thrawn books and the Dark Empire comics from the early to mid 90s. The EU was a lot looser then, not quite as obsessive about everything making sense as a whole, and writers tended to write around a lot of things instead of trying to define them or tie them together. That changed around the same time as the Prequels as Lucas transformed Star Wars into a multimedia Empire where he operated with a more direct hand in planning and production of projects. Tales of the Jedi, the novelizations, and the New Jedi Order book series all came out in these same time period so all of it was roughly in line with one another and behind the sense the writers were all talking to each other and Lucas so they all had loose understandings of what everyone else was doing.

It didn't start falling apart into a mess until the Clone Wars movie and series in 08 started rewriting significant elements of the EU, and Lucas' rampant ego trips over how everyone liked the EU stuff other people were writing more than his gakky movies, became a point of contention. Up to that point, things roughly tended to be created in blocks where all the creators knew what was going on and even if they didn't directly coordinate what they were doing they could write around one another and make everything fit together.

The early novels had Mara Jade and other force sensitive agents of the Emperor, when Sith might have been a regional rank of ethnic title or whatever. I don’t know if they were ever specifically called apprentices, but the Emperor clearly liked to keep his options open.

Jade and the other Hands of the Emperor were first mentioned in Heir to the Empire back in 1991. The idea of Palpatine having acolytes trained in the force but not specifically trained in the Dark Side is pretty old, but the idea back then I think was looser. The Hands would be the early precursor to the Inquisitors who would appear in the Disney canon filling some of the same roles in the setting but being more like mildly force trained special ops rather than sub-Sith.

 LordofHats wrote:

It didn't start falling apart into a mess until the Clone Wars movie and series in 08 started rewriting significant elements of the EU, and Lucas' rampant ego trips over how everyone liked the EU stuff other people were writing more than his gakky movies, became a point of contention. Up to that point, things roughly tended to be created in blocks where all the creators knew what was going on and even if they didn't directly coordinate what they were doing they could write around one another and make everything fit together.

I'd argue they fell apart the moment the Vong were introduced, but I'm spiteful like that.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd argue they fell apart the moment the Vong were introduced, but I'm spiteful like that.

I feel like I'm the only person who looks back and says 'you what, the Vong weren't so bad. Not great but not so bad.' XD

But mostly I refer to the continuity of it all. It all mostly fit together fairly well until Lucas became more of a dictator about things and started rewriting them. Some of his rewrites, imo, were blatantly spiteful serving no purpose other than to piss into the porridge as his relationship with the fanbase became increasingly toxic for both sides.

 LordofHats wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd argue they fell apart the moment the Vong were introduced, but I'm spiteful like that.

I feel like I'm the only person who looks back and says 'you what, the Vong weren't so bad. Not great but not so bad.' XD

But mostly I refer to the continuity of it all. It all mostly fit together fairly well until Lucas became more of a dictator about things and started rewriting them. Some of his rewrites, imo, were blatantly spiteful serving no purpose other than to piss into the porridge as his relationship with the fanbase became increasingly toxic for both sides.

I was never a fan of Serpentor and the denizens of Cobra-La Vong.

Except for one tiny bit of storyline that I thought was truly inspired. Palpatine had visions of the Vong invasion and knew that everything would be lost, so he built a strong Empire and military tonight the Vong with. The Rebellion screwed with everything and allowed the Vong to run roughshod on the galaxy.

 LordofHats wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'd argue they fell apart the moment the Vong were introduced, but I'm spiteful like that.

I feel like I'm the only person who looks back and says 'you what, the Vong weren't so bad. Not great but not so bad.' XD.

No, I actually really enjoyed the Vong arc overall. While some of the individual books were a little ropey, and there was some awfully inconsistent characterisation (particularly with Luke), they were an interesting change from the Imperial Warlord/Superweapon of the Month storytelling that made up most of the EU.